Oregon Releases Temporary MMJ Regulations

Published
January 19, 2014

The Oregon Health Authority has issued temporary rules governing the state’s medical marijuana industry until March 3, when it will begin accepting applications to operate fully licensed and regulated dispensaries.

The temporary rules serve as the blueprint for the permanent regulations. In February, the process begins to make the regulations permanent, a timeline which the health department says will “allow for continued public input on the content of the rules”.

The regulations are similar to those covering the medical marijuana industry in other states, including:

Licenses will not be provided to individuals with drug convictions in the past five years

Retail locations must be more than 1,000 feet from schools

Local zoning rules will apply

Product testing for mold and contaminants will be required, providing a further boost to the testing industry

Dispensary premises must be tightly secured

Products must be closely tracked

More unique is a competitive provision. To avoid development of “green miles” where multiple dispensaries locate in the same neighborhood, no MMJ center may operate within 1,000 feet of another dispensary. Applications for dispensaries to be located in the same territory will be granted on a first-to-file basis.

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3 comments on “Oregon Releases Temporary MMJ Regulations”

Are the existing dispensaries going to be allowed to operate under the temporary rules after March 3rd while their applications are being processed or are they required to stop business. It will take the 4 people the state is hiring a good deal of time to process the large number of applications they will recieve.

The rules governing testing requirements (OAR 333-008-1190) were changed from the previous Draft to a much lower standard. For example, the parts-per-million standard for pesticide detection was lowered from 0.01ppm to 0.1ppm, and the chart of 20 pesticides that offered a good representation of the harmful chemical found in today’s “grow” products, was replaced with a short, vague list of agricultural chemicals that cannabis growers don’t even have general market access to, let alone use. After watching the last open meeting of the OHA Rules Advisory Committee and not seeing any serious issue raised against the standard as-it-stood, we are having a hard time understanding the reasoning behind this compromised new Draft. This is NOT a good thing for the testing industry, nor for the health and safety of the medicinal user; we hope the majority of Oregonians come to see this and speak out in favor of higher testing standards. We invite all correspondence on this topic, thank you.

I think Oregon needs to fix the ppm rules in a person blood stream the federal guidelines now make most all MMJ users illegal to drive.
the ppm. are set way to low all mmj users could not pass even if they wait hours before driving. This is just a setup for more tickets